Excerpt from "The Hero With A Thousand Faces," Joseph Campbell, 1949

"C.G. Jung, on the other hand, has emphasized the crises of the second portion-- when, in order to advance, the shining sphere must submit to descend and disappear, at last, into the night-womb of the grave. The normal symbols of our desires and fears become converted, in this afternoon of the biography, into their opposites; for it is then no longer life but death that is the challenge. What is difficult to leave, then, is not the womb but the phallus-- unless, indeed, the life weariness has already seized the heart, when it will be death that calls the promise of bliss that formerly was the lure of love. Full circle, from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, we com: an ambiguous, enigmatical incursion into a world of solid matter that is soon to melt from us, like the substance of a dream. And, looking back at what had promised to be our own unique, unpredictable, and dangerous adventure, all we find in the end is such a series of standard metamorphoses as men and women have undergone in every wuarter of the world, in all recorded centuries, and under every odd disguise of civilization."